Transhumant Pastoralism, Climate Change, and Conflict in Africa

Abstract

We consider the effects of climate change on seasonally migrant populations that herd livestock – i.e., transhumant pastoralists – in Africa. Traditionally, transhumant pastoralists benei¬ t from a cooperative relationship with sedentary agriculturalists whereby arable land is used for crop farming in the wet season and animal grazing in the dry season. Droughts can disrupt this arrangement by inducing pastoral groups to migrate to agricultural lands before the harvest, causing coni¬‚ict to emerge. We examine this hypothesis by combining ethnographic information on the traditional locations of transhumant pastoralists and sedentary agriculturalists with high-resolution data on the location and timing of rainfall and violent coni¬‚ict events in Africa from 1989–2018. We show that droughts in the territory of transhumant pastoralists lead to coni¬‚ict in neighboring areas. Consistent with the hypothesis, these coni¬‚ict events are concentrated in agricultural areas; they occur during the wet season and not the dry season; and they are due to rainfall’s impact on plant biomass growth. This mechanism explains a sizable proportion of coni¬‚ict events in Africa, particularly civil coni¬‚icts and religious-extremist attacks. We i¬ nd that the effects are muted in the presence of irrigation aid projects, but not in the presence of other forms of foreign aid. The effects approach zero as pastoral groups share more political power.